By Liu Shinan
Teaching made up well over a quarter of my working career, so I
have a strong campus complex. I closely follow any news about
teachers. Yesterday, a piece of such news upset me greatly.
Hui Zhimin, a 42-year old teacher in Ningxian County, Gansu
Province, was dismissed recently after working as a "substitute
teacher" for 21 years. He was one of the 448,000 teachers of his
kind across the country the Ministry of Education plans to
disqualify before an unspecified deadline in the near future.
A "substitute teacher" is one employed to teach in a primary or
middle school but is not on the official payroll. Employing
substitute teachers has been a common practice in rural areas,
especially in remote and mountainous regions, because of a shortage
of qualified teachers. They are mostly high school graduates who
did not go to a university or college.
Although not having an eligible education background for
teaching, the substitutes make up a fairly large part of the
teaching staff in less developed areas and are heavily underpaid.
According to an investigation conducted by a senior government
official of Weiyuan County in Gansu Province, most substitute
teachers were paid less than 80 yuan (US$10) a month and 70 percent
of them were paid only 40 yuan a month. Weiyuan probably is an
extreme example, but typically an official teacher's salary can be
used to pay several substitute teachers.
Thirty years ago, I was a middle school teacher in a mountainous
county in my home province in Central China. I remember that my
substitute teacher colleagues were paid about one fourth or one
third what I earned. But they were no less experienced and devoted
than I in imparting knowledge to students, teaching them how to be
good citizens and completing other tasks a teacher was required to
do at that time. They never complained.
The story of Hui I read yesterday surprised me. I didn't expect
that, after so many years, there are still so many substitute
teachers and they are still so underpaid. What is more upsetting is
that the Ministry of Education is determined to "qing tui," or
"sort out and discharge" as the Chinese official jargon states,
these teachers.
Anyone who is familiar with China's bureaucratic vocabulary
understands that the true weight of "qing tui" is on "tui"
(discharge) though "qing" (sort out) may leave some hope of keeping
the substitute teachers and converting them to official status.
That hope is actually slim. According to the spokesman of the
Ministry of Education, a substitute teacher can "become a certified
teacher by passing the employment tests organized by the local
education authorities according to needs" and the precondition for
participating in these tests is that the teacher "has eligible
education background, has good quality and has acquired the
qualifications for teaching."
These prerequisites are tantamount to rejection. First, the poor
teachers have to spend several years to acquire that "eligible
education," then they have to pass the employment test. According
to the spokesman, the "qing tui" will be completed "in a very short
period of time." Can the teachers gain these qualifications before
the authorities accomplish the "qing tui?"
The "qing tui" is particularly unfair for middle-aged substitute
teachers like Hui. They have devoted their golden age to the
education of the younger generation and they helped the government
solve the difficulty in providing education in poverty-stricken
areas by accepting low wages. By now they have lost the capability
to take on a new profession and the strength for manual labour.
One of the considerations behind the "qing tui" move is that all
teachers should hold a degree of higher learning. This is
reasonable for improving the quality of the nation's teaching
staff. But we should not set it as a criterion for those senior
substitute teachers to continue their teaching careers.
Just compare an experienced substitute teacher and a young
person who has newly graduated from a college. I dare say the
former is much, much more qualified for the teaching post.
Of course, putting these teachers on the regular payroll may
cause a considerable increase in the State budget. The increase,
however, is a must. No other expenses are more important than
education. A little squeeze on other expenses may well meet this
need. For instance, a study by a research panel of the Economy
Forecast Department under the State Information Centre indicates
that banquets hosted with public funds across the country cost 370
billion yuan (US$ 46.3 billion) in 2004. Another study showed that
the cost of overseas trips using public money was 200 billion yuan
(US$25 billion) in the same year.
Suppose the middle-aged teachers like Hui made up two thirds of
all substitute teachers and their monthly salary increase is 1,200
yuan (US$148) after being put on a regular payroll, the annual
increase in the State budget would be only 4.3 billion yuan (US$540
million).
(China Daily November 9, 2006)